Welcome to number 8 of “10 Things Your Friends May Not Know About Drugs”.

Here’s the question, “Drugs increase creativity”. True or false?

False. Nothing can actually be further from the truth. Although they do appear to do that sometimes.

However, I’m going to cover a scale of emotions from the bottom of the scale to the top of the scale really fast and I think I can illustrate this for you.

At the bottom of the scale is an emotion called apathy. That just means that the person really doesn’t care about anything at all.

You go, “Hey, how’s it going today?” And the guys kind of like, “Who cares, we’re all going to die anyway.”

How many of you have seen somebody like that before? Exactly, they just don’t care.

A little higher on the scale is an emotion of grief. Means the person’s kind of bummed. Their kind of sad right.

A little higher on the scale is an emotion of fear. I’m sure you’ve seen somebody like this before. You walk up, “Hey how’s it going today?” Most people can make good eye contact with you. The person in fear, his eyes will kind of flick around, they dart, they go left, they go right, they go up in the air. Sometimes you think there’s a plane flying overhead and there’s no plane. That’s the emotion of fear.

Covert hostility, this word covert simply means something hidden or sneaky right. Hostility is very, very obvious. You know you walk up to a guy, “Hey how’s it going today?” And the guys like, “Roar”! You know he practically bites your head off. That’s obvious.

This one is not so obvious. What I’m going to need you guys to do at home is to take a look at somebody in the room and give that person a great big smile.

Now while you’re smiling, look at them right in the eye. Okay, while you’re smiling and looking them in the eye, think of all these rotten, critical thoughts about that person, but keep smiling.

Now while you’re thinking of all those rotten critical thoughts and smiling, say, “hi”.

That is covert hostility. It’s the knife in the back, it’s something you can’t quite put your finger on it, but it’s something that somebody’s running on you and it doesn’t feel too good.

A little higher on the scale is an obvious one. That’s anger. Walk up and say, “How’s it going?” And the guys like, “What! What do you want!” Very, very obvious emotion.

A little higher on the scale is the emotion of boredom. The guy’s kind of (yawning), “Hey what’s going on today? I don’t know.” He’s just a little bit bored. It’s a lot higher than apathy, not caring, but it’s still not quite up into the positive ones yet.

Higher than that is the emotion of interest. If you meet somebody in interest, they’ll look right at you. They talk to you, they listen. If you ever had somebody who’s a really good listener, generally, they’re in that emotion of interest.

A little higher on the scale is the emotion of cheerfulness. Person’s like up. He’s upbeat, he’s hey, “What’s going on, what do you guys want to do? Here we go.” Boom, boom, boom, boom right.

And then the highest one is on this particular scale is the emotion of enthusiasm.

Guys like pow, “Come on, let’s go, let’s get it done.” Bam, bam, bam, bam. Not in a negative way, but in a very, very positive way with lots of energy.

Unfortunately, this is what most drugs do. Let’s say, I keep talking about this boredom right. He’s trying to relieve boredom. So along comes Joe Smoe and says, “Here check it out, try some of this.”

What it does is it lifts him temporarily into enthusiasm or to cheerfulness. You ever see somebody smoke weed and they start laughing and they’re giggling and they can’t stop laughing. The problem with that cheerfulness is that it’s a fake cheerfulness.

Why do I say fake? Well, what happens when the drug wears off? Where does he go next? Usually down to apathy.

I don’t know if you’ve seen somebody with a bad hangover from alcohol. Well he doesn’t care. It takes him a little while to get moving and slowly he’ll come back up that scale, but he won’t come quite back to where he was before.

In other words, the chronic way he’s feeling is just a little bit more bored, but hey that worked so he does it again.

In order to create, in order to be creative, really and truly creative, the person has to pretty much stay up, interested in life, interested in art, interested in people, cheerful about it and creative in his work and creative in his life.

Drugs promise the person that, but in the end, they simply take it away.

That’s number 8 of our series.

I hope that information helps you guys out.

So don’t miss number 9. The question on that one is going to be, “Drugs improve your senses.” True or false?

C-ya then.

If you’d like to visit our website for more information on drugs, it’s www.narconon.org. That’s www.narconon.org

This is a drug education video answering the question “what do drugs do to your feelings, emotions and creativity?”. You may find more information about drugs on our website. If you know someone with an addiction problem whether drug or alcohol, please contact us at 800-737-5250 or email us.